University Conjoint 412
The Family in Later Life

Course Introduction

This course is about older adults and the families who care for them. It focuses on issues that affect aging families, and emphasizes helping people deal with family concerns. By taking this course, you will learn how to work with families of many different backgrounds in a wide variety of settings. You will also gain practical ideas on how to interact with and support families, empowering them and building on their strengths.

This course is relevant to your experience. The material outlined and the people studied share many of your experiences as a member of the human race and as a member of some kind of a family unit. As you make your way through this course, keep in mind how the elders you know have lived their lives and live how they live within a family.

About the Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with students and with your instructor, and links to a rich array of online resources.

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your text, schedule an exam, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communication with Your Instructor and Student Peers

• Online Discussion Forums, designed by the University of Washington award winning Catalyst team, allow you to communicate with other currently enrolled students and with your instructor. We encourage you to use the forum to exchange ideas, resources, and comments about your course work with other students in this course. This unstructured forum is monitored by your instructor.
• You can use e-mail to ask me a question or preferably post your question on the discussion forum. I will reply on the same forum.

Online Resources

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Organized by subjects, Online Resources link you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

Course Objectives

When you have completed this course, you will be able to

• interpret family in a broad sense, and identify cultural, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnic diversity in families;
• explain how roles, rules, and secrets affect the intergenerational family;
• explain how outside influences (such as money and politics) influence later-life families;
• practice beginning skills for working with aging families, and apply knowledge of resources designed to serve them;
• analyze your own experience of family, and describe how it may affect your perceptions of later-life families;
• identify the special concerns of older families, such as elder abuse, and intervene in caregiving issues; and
• explain "non-traditional" ways of working with families, and predict issues for families of the future.

What You Will Learn in this Course

Older adults and their families do not exist in a vacuum. Families are systems that exist in and are affected by larger systems in society. Marjorie Cantor describes an elder as the center of a series of concentric circles, each of which contains support elements in her book, Family Caregiving Agenda for the Future. Families are part of these informal care circles. The situations in which an elder and his or her family find themselves are influenced by policies of a larger society. You will learn about family systems theory and how it helps us understand family dynamics. Roles, rules, secrets and functions of family members affect how the family operates; you will learn how to identify these.

Definitions of family have varied over time and across cultures. People are related to others by blood, marriage, or other connections that create a "family" for them. Today, the definition of family and who comprises that family is a source of much discussion. This course will look at both "traditional" and "non-traditional" family life and ways that "helpers" from many disciplines can assist them. A wise elder once told a nursing colleague of mine that the real question for defining family is "Who can you count on?" And this is especially important for the aging family. Walker et al. emphasize interdependence. (For a complete discussion of their perspectives on family see see the section: "What is a Family" in Part One of Walker et al. Although for many reasons, policymakers may have a very precise definition of the word, the working definition of family for this course is those who provide intimacy and support (material, financial, emotional) over time.

To help older adults, we need to take into account the families that surround them. Even elders who seem to be alone and not connected with their kin may have family "connections" through remembrances of their family members. They may spend time talking about their family losses. Unfortunately, our society contains many policies that appear to have as their sole focus the elder, without considering those around them. However, this appears to be changing with federal and state Family Caregiver Support projects that have developed in the early twenty-first century.

Each family system is unique but is affected by the demographics of the larger society. Demographics have changed a good deal over the past 100 years. The number of elders is projected to increase as "baby boomers" hit retirement age. Decreasing birth and mortality rates influence how families provide support throughout the life cycle.

Economic, political, and policy influences affect families' abilities to provide care for elders. Family leave and Medicare are just two examples of general policies that affect aging families. These influence where people should be cared for and who will be doing the caring.

Families are units over time, and what has happened at earlier times in life affects the aging family. Intergenerational relationships profoundly affect all members of the family unit throughout the life cycle. There can be circular patterns in relationships. The current members of a family may be in relationships that are similar to a previous generation's. For example, a woman may marry a man very much like her father.

Our own experience of family profoundly affects how we see other families. What we have experienced and learned from our family of origin provides the "filter" we use when we view the worlds of the aging families with whom we may work. You'll learn to evaluate your own filters and preconceptions about the experiences of other families.

Aging families have much to teach us about love, caring, survival, and ways to overcome hardships. Dealing with families' struggles and building on their strengths are powerful ways to experience the vigor of later-life families. Families can grow and change over time and those who work with them can be catalysts and supporters.

About the Textbooks

• Wendy Lustbader and Nancy Hooyman's Taking Care of Aging Family Members is a classic. I use it with families in my social work practice. It clearly lays out many of the dilemmas faced by aging families and offers practical ways to deal with them.
• "Legacy and Aging: Personal and Societal Choices" is an issue of the journal Generations, edited by Rosalie Kane. It is a series of articles that examines the bigger question of what different generations owe each other, and how this is lived day to day by families.
• Families in Later Life: Connections and Transitions is filled with articles from professional journals, literary work, and the several editors' perspectives on the aging family. It provides a broad balance of thoughts and some first person accounts of the experience of families in transition over the lifecycle.

About the Videos

The two videos you will watch during this course, "Social Roles and Relationships in Old Age" and "The Family and Intergenerational Relationships," are from the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting series Growing Old in a New Age.

You have two options for viewing these videos. The videos can be viewed online at the Annenberg/CPB Web site. You will be required to register at the site, but registration is free. For more information on viewing the videos on the Anneberg/CPB Web site, including technical requirements, go to http://learner.org/view_programs/view.programs.html. You can also rent the videos from UWEO. See the Video Rental information in the Student Handbook for details.

The Video Viewing Guide provides a series of questions for each video to help you watch for and focus on major points of the video. Please note that these questions are for your own use. You do not need to submit them.

Lessons

This course has eight lessons. Because they build on each other, it is important to do the lessons and the readings in the assigned sequence. Although we will deal with various topics in this course, a common theme throughout the lessons will be the strengths families demonstrate over time. In spite of changes in function and the many transitions families face over the life span, they remain a strong resource to the elders in their midst.

Lesson One

The course begins by exploring how history, demography, and policy influence family systems. In Lesson One, you will explore family systems theory and normative developmental tasks for families.

Lesson Two

Lesson Two focuses on assessing aging family issues, with a special emphasis on social roles, cultural and ethnic differences, and countertransference.

Lesson Three

The third lesson addresses concerns of partners in non-marital relationships, divorced and blended families, those who have never been in relationships, and the very oldest old couples.

Lesson Four

Lesson Four includes such topics as intergeneration sharing and strain, and also examines the "grandparent" role and the importance of "legacy".

Lesson Five

Caregiving is the main theme for Lesson Five, which explores family feelings and explains special concerns of dealing with dementia and developmental disabilities. This lesson also addresses elder abuse.

Lesson Six

Issues relating to transitions, loss, and grief are the focus of Lesson Six. The lesson also considers the challenges of finding living arrangements, finding meaning in dealing with losses, and death and dying.

Lesson Seven

In Lesson Seven, ways to assist families to empower themselves to find and use resources are presented. Care management is explained and the importance of hope is emphasized

Lesson Eight

Lesson Eight provides assistance in getting ready for the final examination, including study questions and organizational help.

Study Questions

You will find study questions at the ends of most of the lessons. These are not to be turned in for grading. Use them to pull together what you have learned from the readings, the online course materials, and what you know of family from your own experience. By answering the study questions you will better focus your learning, complete the assignments, and integrate what you are studying with your basic life and work experience.

References for This Lesson

At the end of each lesson, you will also find a section with a list of references that were used in preparing that lesson. You may want to find this reference if a particular topic or concern is of interest to you.

For Further Reading

This final section will point you to other information about the lesson topic that you may find helpful.

Assignments

This course has four assignments that you will complete and send to your instructor.

• For Assignment 1, you will answer seven questions about your family's history and send your answers to your instructor.You will submit this assignment after you complete Lesson One. Please submit the Student Information Sheet on the syllabus, as well; describe yourself and your expectations for the course.
• For Assignment 2, you will examine a case study of an elder who lives alone, and use the assessment questions in Lesson Two to write a two-page paper evaluating the elder’s situation. You will submit this assignment after you complete Lesson Two.

  Please submit a synopsis of your final paper along with Assignment 3.

• For Assignment 3, you will write your own ethical will or values statement guided by questions from the instructor. You will submit this assignment after you complete Lesson Four. Please submit a synopsis of your final paper, as well; describe in a paragraph or two what you plan to cover in the major paper for this course (Assignment 4 in Lesson Six).
• For Assignment 4, you will write a ten to twelve-page paper that analyzes a family concern. Topics might include elder abuse, grandparenthood, "non-traditional" aging families, how policies affect caregiving, or self-care for the caregiver. By the time you finish Lesson Four, I will need to know the topic you have chosen. You will submit this paper after you complete Lesson Six.

Submitting Assignments

For instructions on how to submit assignments, please see the "About Your Instructor" page on the syllabus.

Final Examination

This will be a two-hour, proctored, open book/open note essay exam to test integration of the materials from the entire course. It will cover material from the course readings, videos, and your research papers. Exams will be graded on the clarity of the material written and how well it refers to the applicable parts of the course. I expect you to use specific examples from the course materials. (Lesson Eight contains a sample examination section.)

Course Grade

Your grade for the course will be based on the following percentages:

Hints on How to Study

Schedule your study. Plan when you will study and when you will send in assignments. Stick to your plan and pace yourself. Students who miss deadlines or never complete their courses usually haven't followed this simple principle. Use the planning calendar included in the online syllabus to schedule your assignments and plan for the final exam.

Take notes. If you underline or highlight in your books, focus on essential ideas. If you keep a notebook, finish reading a section of the text prior to taking notes. If words or ideas are new to you, put these in your notes and define them in your own way. Keep track of the key words section in each lesson.

About the Course Developer

Marty Richards, MSW, LICSW is also the instructor for this course. For over 35 years, she has been a geriatric social worker. Since receiving her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Washington in 1970, she has worked in the community and in long-term care settings. Teaching classes to elders and families where they meet, in churches, community clubs, and employee assistance programs, has been a special interest. She now has a private geriatric care management, counseling, and consultation practice in Port Townsend, and works primarily with elders and families coping with chronic illness and transitions. She is particularly interested in issues related to dementia. Spirituality and aging is also a special area of study for her.

Marty began teaching in 1979 as a faculty member on an interdisciplinary team at a teaching nursing home, and she has taught part-time at the UW School of Social Work from 1979 to 1992. She has also been on the teaching faculty of the Northwest Geriatric Education Center, largely involved in outreach to the rural areas of four states. Since 1984, she has been teaching "Social and Cultural Aspects of Aging" (originally with Jim Green, Ph.D.) on campus and through distance learning. She has also taught "The Family in Later Life" since 1986.

References for This Lesson

Cantor, Marjorie, ed. Family Caregiving: Agenda for the Future. San Francisco: American Society on Aging, 1994.

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